The number of patients admitted to hospital has soared by almost 13% in just five years, figures show.

Every day 41,500 patients are admitted to hospitals across England, according to the latest statistics.

During 2012/13, NHS hospitals dealt with 15.1 million admissions, the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) said.

The figure represents a 12.7% rise on the number of patients admitted in 2007/8, the HSCIC data show.

Earlier this year leading doctors raised concerns about increasing demand on hospitals.

The Royal College of Physicians said hospitals are so full that elderly patients are being discharged in the middle of the night and routine blood tests are being carried out at 3am.

The HSCIC figures showed that th e hospital trusts with the greatest number of admissions in 2012/13 were Barts Health NHS Trust in London, which admitted 237,500 patients, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, which admitted 222,200, and Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust in Birmingham, which admitted 220,400 people.

HSCIC chair Kingsley Manning said: "Today's report shows the rise in hospital admissions continues, and when looking at admission trends over the last five years, hospitals in England are now dealing with more people than ever."

The figures also show that NHS Doctors in England conducted 7,980 bariatric procedures in treating obesity, which is a 205% rise on five years ago but a fall of 10% from last year.

And hospitals dealt with 295,000 admissions that were wholly attributable to alcohol - a 3.1% drop from the previous year.

Royal College of Physicians (RCP) president Sir Richard Thompson said: "The Royal College of Physicians report, Hospitals on the Edge, set out the magnitude of the challenges facing acute care services in hospitals. These included increases in clinical demand, changes in patient needs, fractured care and a workforce crisis.

"These latest figures recognise much of what was highlighted then and the growth of the problem in recent years.

"The recent independent report by the Future Hospital Commission called for a radical restructuring of the wards where acutely ill patients are treated, and a new organisational and management structure whose responsibilities for acutely ill medical patients will stretch out from the hospital into the wider community, developing the idea of a local healthcare system.

"If implemented, these proposals could relieve the pressure on acute admissions."